Brad and Dan begin the episode by discussing the student loan forgiveness announcement the Biden administration made this week. They ask whether it went far enough and then track the responses from the GOP, who uniformly denounced it as irresponsible. Unfortunately for them we have the receipts about how much they received in forgiven PPP loans . . . Brad then takes us through a history of how universities have lost public funding, leading to higher fees, and you guessed it, a student loan crisis. This all happened when BIPOC and women started entering universities in larger numbers during the 70s and 80s.
In the second segment they discuss how abortion has become the primary issue in statewide primary races across the nation. Dan tracks all the numbers from Florida to New York to Oregon and Brad discusses the overwhelming number of young women who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania.
In the last segment they examine the calls to restrict voting rights to landowning men between the ages of 35-65 by prominent right-wing pundits. It's creeping fascism, pure and simple.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I am here today with my co-host.
Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
It's nice to see you, Brad.
It looks like Brad's the nomadic recorder who's like, you know, either sitting on the edge of the tub or like In the basement.
I'm waiting till you're like in the backseat of your car with like a phone but I'll always appreciate the efforts you make all the way around.
There's no more phone booths.
I wish I could just like duck into a phone booth like some sort of podcasting Clark Kent or something.
The podcasting Superman that you are.
Well as soon as I said that I knew I was comparing myself to Superman and now I'm gonna have to edit this out because that's that was uncalled for.
It's the beginning of the school year, Dan, which I think in some ways is exciting, and I always like fall semester way better than spring semester because people are rested, they're excited, they want to be back, they're kind of, you know, want to be on campus.
Yay, new year!
Let's do it, everybody!
Also, I think for a lot of us who teach a lot of dread of like, oh, my gosh, I got to get my syllabus ready.
I got to figure out how to wear professional clothes again and just kind of hold it together.
So you feeling some of that as we get going here?
I am.
And we're in person, so I have to wear pants and stuff like that.
So it's pretty oppressive, really, all the way around.
But no, I'm with you.
I hate spring semester.
I try to figure out why.
Everybody knows I live in New England and I like all the kitschy New England fall stuff.
I like the leaves and the apple cider and football season and everything else.
And it's like, yeah, spring, it's just like, oh, it's going to it's going to rain for like three months and be muddy.
And like, that's it.
So.
Yeah, it's always exciting, but busy.
And this is actually a nice break from the tedium of plugging in the syllabus into the online portal that students have to use.
That's the exciting stuff.
That's why we all go into higher ed, is to link all the PDFs to Hyperlink so students can get them.
That's what we're really about.
That's why I got into it.
All right.
Well, speaking of higher ed, Dan, what a segue.
Wow.
Sorry.
Sorry, everyone.
A little too much coffee.
It's early in the morning.
All right.
We're going to talk about student loan forgiveness.
So speaking of higher ed, we are going to talk about Biden's loan forgiveness announcement.
We're also going to get into some primaries from around the country and then talk about our last segment we're going to call Fauci and creeping fascism.
So you're going to have to stay tuned for that because it's pretty juicy.
So Let's start here, Dan, with Biden's announcement on student loans.
So some of you know already, I think all of you should know already, that President Biden announced this week that he is going to enact a program where most people have eligibility for $10,000 of loan forgiveness.
Some might even actually be available for $20,000.
This is an income kind of base, so if you make over a certain amount of money, you're not eligible.
One of the things, too, Dan, that is part of this is that he's enacting a policy that will end excess interest on the loans.
And so if you have a student loan and you're paying your minimum monthly payment, then the balance won't increase, which is massive.
I mean, this is something I think that people should just probably see as the most influential long-term change that he's made.
He's also capping the monthly payment at 5% of your income.
So friends out there, some of you know this, some of you don't, that there might be somebody who's been making $45,000 a year, but their monthly.
monthly payment is $2,000 a month.
So anyway, those are all big changes.
Now, nobody seemingly is happy.
There's a few people who are happy.
I think some folks that have shown that they're pretty excited about just the fact that something has happened.
There are many, and I think I'd put myself in this camp, to the left of Biden, who would say that this is not enough and it's not what you campaigned on.
And there are, of course, many to the right, who we'll get to in just a moment, who would say that Any loan forgiveness is unfair, and this is not okay, and blah, blah, blah.
I got a ton of material here, Dan, on just the reactions to this, but what do you think quickly about the $10,000 and $20,000 marks and what this means for people?
I think that probably, I'm with you, all right?
I'm further to the left of Biden, and I don't think it goes far enough.
I also am enough of a realist that I'm like, this is obviously better than not this, but I hope that doesn't turn into the excuse of like, well, we, you know, we did the debt relief stuff, so we're done, because it doesn't go far enough.
I think those numbers are low.
I mean, if you look at what people actually owe for college and things like that, but I agree with you as well.
Longer term, it's the things like basically ending predatory practices by lending agencies that sort of, as everybody knows, the less reputable ones in particular, but even the mainstream ones, they're like, you know, they're, they're like the money tree lenders of like higher ed.
And so yeah, the interest rates can kill people and somebody somebody who's like 1820 years old, maybe A little bit naive about that, or hears about, oh, someday I'll make a salary of X amount, and it sure sounds like a lot, and it feels like it's not going to be a big deal, and in the immediacy, you're not thinking about what it's like when you're in your, say, mid-30s and trying to find a place to live and start a family and all of that stuff.
So I think all of it's significant, and I think it's real.
Of course, we'll get into, you know, the right crying about all the things that they cry about.
But I'm with you.
I think you can go further.
But I think for a lot of people, especially moving forward, it'll make a real difference.
I think people who are getting loans now, knowing that it's capped at certain monthly payments and a certain percentage of income, I think that that's really, really significant.
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